Matteo Renzi’s transition to power is a gamble not just for his party, but for the Italian political system as a whole

Last week Italian prime minister Enrico Letta resigned, with the general secretary of the Partito Democratico, Matteo Renzi, expected to take over as the country’s new PM. Arianna Giovannini and James L. Newell assess Renzi’s transition to power and the stakes for both his party and the wider situation in Italy. They note that although Renzi was the obvious successor […]

The eurozone debt crisis and subsequent economic reforms introduced across Europe have helped to expose endemic levels of corruption and party patronage in countries such as Greece. Party patronage and party government in European democracies uses more than 600 expert interviews to explore the nature of party patronage across fifteen European democracies. For Sofia Vasilopoulou, one of this timely book’s […]

As street protests in Turkey continue, and the government’s response has begun to harden, many are now talking about a coming ‘Turkish spring’. Burak Kadercan warns against such an analysis of these events, arguing that the protestors have no collective vision of change, and that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan remains a relatively popular leader. He writes that if the ruling AKP […]

In Romania, this year has seen the resignation of one government, a vote of no-confidence in another, an attempt to change the electoral system and efforts by the government to impeach the sitting President. Cristina Bucur looks over political developments in Romania during 2012, finding that they have been characterised by constitutional infighting and an often difficult political cohabitation between […]

In their new book, ‘For Europe’, Guy Verhofstadt and Daniel Cohn-Bendit outline a manifesto for the creation of a fully federal Europe, complete with a new European constitution. In an interview with EUROPP editors Chris Gilson and Stuart A Brown, they discuss their manifesto, arguing that the current eurozone crisis leaves EU Member States with no alternative but to pursue […]

While rioting and violent protests have been a frequent occurrence on the streets of Greek cities since the start of the debt crisis, Spain has not yet experienced similar scenes. Aikaterini Andronikidou and Iosif Kovras assess why this is the case, noting that the two countries have very different cultural attitudes toward anti-system politics. This partly reflects the historical transitions […]